Hook and loop fasteners have a variety of uses. Initially, such fasteners were used as fabric-to-fabric connectors. Fasteners of this type have found additional usefulness as closures of various types and as quick connection and disconnection means for objects such as wall panels, pictures etc. In all of the many known applications for hook and loop fasteners, the conventional manner used in fastening is to press the mating hook and loop elements firmly into face-to-face engagement (parallel to the upstanding hooks and loops) and to separate these elements by progressively peeling one from the other. By so doing, the bond of hook-to-loop is gradually broken, a few of the hook and loop engagements at a time, and thus disengagement is readily accomplished.
The engagement between a hook and loop fastener is particularly strong in what may be called the shear direction. This direction is essentially perpendicular to the conventional face-to-face direction of engagement or disengagement of the mating fastener parts and requires a detachment force much greater than the progressive peeling force just described. In order to dislocate one fastener element with respect to the other in the shear direction, the totality of interengagements between hook and loop pile elements must be dislodged at once. Furthermore new interengagements of the hook and loop fastener elements continue in the sheer direction if these elements are dislocated in shear so that such interengagement is much more continuous than the face-to-face engagement.